Yokohama to Close OTR Tire Plant in the US
Company Yokohama will close the tire plant for special equipment of its subsidiary Y-TWS in Spartanburg (South Carolina, USA) less than two years after the enterprise was purchased as part of a deal to acquire the tire business of Trelleborg for $2.3 billion.
In mid-November 2024, Yokohama also announced the closure of the Hadera (Israel) plant, acquired along with the Alliance Tire Group (ATG) and capable of producing up to 42,000 tons of special tires per year. At the end of January, the company reported that it would stop production at the OTR tire manufacturing plant in Prague, which previously belonged to Trelleborg. The capacity of the Czech plant is 28,000 tons of products per year. In total, 744 employees work at the two plants, and the staff of the US plant is 90 people, who will also lose their jobs after the production stops, scheduled for the end of March 2025.
As noted by Mark Margosyan, Director of Development at Y-TWS in North America, the closure of the plant in South Carolina is due to the company's intention to "optimize its efficiency". "This is part of our strategy, which consists of three components: innovation, digitalization, and optimization," he said in an interview with Tire Business.
A Y-TWS representative also added that although the plant's workers are not unionized, the company "will follow all rules" and help them with employment, and noted that demand will be met by facilities in Charles City (Iowa) and Europe.
In July 2024, Yokohama announced that it had increased the capacity of the Spartanburg plant by 20%, and at the time it was reported that this was a "great example of localized production, providing high results due to a deep understanding of the market". In February 2025, the company closed a deal to acquire the OTR business of Goodyear for $905 million.
Over the past four months, this is the third company to announce the closure of a tire plant in the US. In November 2024, it became known that due to profitability problems, the Sumitomo plant in Tonawanda (New York), which has been open for over a hundred years, will be stopped. In January 2025, Bridgestone announced the closure of the truck tire manufacturing plant in LaVergne (Tennessee).